


Not With A Bang (Checkmate)

by Not_Crazy_Just_a_Fangirl



Series: Companion Stories - Luthors and Kryptonians [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Clark Kent Saves Lex Luthor, Gen, Green Kryptonite, Lex Finds Out, Lex Luthor isn't evil, Smallville - Freeform, Strained Friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 09:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_Crazy_Just_a_Fangirl/pseuds/Not_Crazy_Just_a_Fangirl
Summary: Lex plays chess. Clark was always better at checkers.Or, things fall apart: slowly then all at once.





	Not With A Bang (Checkmate)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the phase: "The world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper."

Lex goes to Smallville because its where everything began, before he even knew the telltale signs of the beginning of the end. A meteor crashes, green rocks litter the ground, he loses all his hair. The Kent’s can’t have a baby, but they find one in a field. In fourteen years before anyone connects any dots.

 

Its fourteen years since he’s last stood in Smallville and Lex is an adult but doesn’t feel like it. All he knows is he’s smarter than his father gives his credit for, and this is the farthest he’s even been all on his own. He feels a little like Icarus, getting the first taste of flight. Except, when the car goes crunch-crash over the side of the bridge, he’s on the side of the road, staring down a fourteen-year-old far too earnest to be doing anything but lying straight through his teeth. What teenager doesn’t want payment or glory for saving a life? Probably when that life is a Luthor. Lex comes to Smallville to be his own man, but his name is a brand he cannot escape. Even when his father is halfway across the country, he feels the noose tightening around his neck.

 

Lex has never had a friend, not really. Sons of his father’s business partner, acquaintances, kids his sister, Lena, introduced him to because she worries about him and his apparent abhorrence for most of humanity. He has somehow found a friend in Clark Kent, a boy several years younger and several degrees peppier and nerdier and yet, it seems, just as much weight in his shoulders. Lex looks at the handprints gouged into the car, but he won’t pry Clark’s secrets from him just yet. He’s a little bitter that Jonathan Kent won’t let Clark keep the truck. And a little jealous. Jonathon Kent may hate Lex for his name alone, but he is the antithesis to Lionel Luthor; every bit the sort of man Lex is trying and failing to be, though not for lack of trying so much of lack of a role model.

 

Clark is allergic to green rocks, it isn’t the strangest thing to ever happen in Smallville, but Lex is not from Smallville. He is, it seems, the only one to see through the Kent boy. The fact that he’s fourteen doesn’t escape Lex either. But Lex is not one to show his hand, when he can make the other player sweat.

 

Clark and Lex are best friends. But they’ve been playing chicken since they met. Lex sees the handprints in the car. Knows that Clark shouldn’t possibly get to school on time. Sees the atrocities Smallville breeds that others seem to selectively forgot. Lex is a Luthor; he is not an idiot. Lex also protect Clark from his own father, or perhaps both their fathers, some days it’s hard to tell who has the upper hand. Lex knows Clark’s secret, Clark knows he knows, but Clark LIESLIESLIES until Lex thinks his skull is going to crack apart.

 

Lex fears for humanity, if Clark isn’t the last alien to land. Clark fears his powers, fears failing to protect, fears the rise of a villain he can’t handle.

 

They say the hero makes his own villain. The villain only as strong as the hero. Two sides of a coin.  Both of them are living up to their destinies. Playing the hands they are dealt.

 

Lex is a master at chess. But he can only bluff his cards for so long.

 

Lex is a Luthor. Clark is Superman. Smallville has always been the beginning of the end; and in Metropolis, Lex is the one with the home field advantage.


End file.
